"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Sunday Column

My latest in our local newspaper:

A few years back, it seemed Republican politicians might
have been considering trying to win elections based on economic policy, until
enough voters did the math and realized their budget plans and economic claims
didn’t add up. So now, just as when Karl Rove was calling the campaign shots
for George Bush, it appears they’ve concluded all they’ve got left is the anger
stuff. The them-against-us stuff, the scary, Fox “news” stuff. I hope I’m not
the only one who finds it disheartening, because I still cling to the belief
that having two strong opposing parties, each with good ideas and a desire for
honest discourse, is what, in times long gone, accounted for America’s
greatness.

Well, as they say, when all you’ve got is a hammer (in this
case, economic policies that have failed every time they’ve been tried),
everything starts to look like a nail. Today’s Tea-Party-dominated Republican
party, rife with “poor-me”-ism, has tossed the towel and resumed pounding the
reliable ralliers of retrograde revanchists: immigration, sex, and religious
paranoia. (North Carolina, fast becoming a singularity of insanity, recently
disgorged a dazzling legislative twofer: restricting abortion and banning
Sharia law in the same bill. Sharia law! North Carolinians must be sleeping
much better now.)

There’s not room here to cover it all, so let’s
observe our self-described fiscal conservatives as they deal with the
fast-disappearing problem of immigration. What got them to agree to consider
legislation that tries to address illegal immigrants already here and
contributing? Militarizing our southern border. Adding twenty thousand more
guards: one about every 275 feet. Spending billions of dollars, much of which
will go to giant defense contractors: Northrup Grumman radar systems, Sikorsky
Blackhawk helicopters, others made by American Eurocopter and Bell. (Yes: manufacturers
are specifically named in the bill. Anyone wonder why?)

At this point it’s worth reminding everyone that, under President Obama,
there have been more deportations of illegals than during any previous
presidency. And that crossings of our border with Mexico have dropped to a net
of zero. I’m not suggesting it’s easy to deal with the issue of undocumented
immigrants already here; but as an ongoing problem, illegal immigration has
moved way down the list of things we desperately need to address. And yet, if
you listen to Congressional Republicans, you’d think we’re still being overrun.
When the problems we have are too tall for single-story thinkers, all you can
do to rally the troops, evidently, is turn to the tried and true tropes of
tactical trickery. It’s what you do when you figure your voters are too dumb to
notice, or too frightened to care.

A few years ago I volunteered as a community observer of culminating
projects by graduating high school seniors. It was an eye-opener. (I’ll
stipulate that I only saw a few, hardly a representative sample.) One was a
girl who’d spent months in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, having escaped the
war in Iraq. Required to include a slideshow, she’d made impressive
multi-functional ones, and spoke in considerable detail, in perfect English,
about the work she’d done, with obvious pride. Following her was a US-born
girl, who, it was clear, had slapped something together at the last minute, her
slides minimal and uninformative, her affect disinterested. I saw a Hispanic
boy, many of whose immigrant family came, too, beaming with pride. Same with an
Asian kid. Not a single US-born (dare I add “white?”) student was accompanied
by family. The contrast was startling.

There’s nothing more destructive to our future than the anti-immigrant
fire burning amongst so many of us (except, maybe, the recently reported
halting of medical and scientific research due to forced budget cuts), fanned
by the unformed anger of the wrongest of our rightest wing, and manipulated for
electoral advantage by their cynical political leaders. If the American dream
survives anywhere, it’s in our immigrant community. Look at the names of
students winning spelling bees, science and math awards, giving valedictory
speeches, earning scholarships. Without them, our country would become locked in a time warp; fulfilling
Tea Party dreams, while creating a nightmare for our kids.

Illegal is illegal. No one (except, maybe, conservative agri-businessmen)
is in favor of illegal immigration. But the wholesale rejection of immigration
by large chunks of today’s Republican Party, as it sees its relevance fading
like aging drapery, is the most pernicious thing they propose. Other than the
rest of their agenda, like the aforementioned defunding of everything we need
to survive as a nation.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™